N00129:330
Useful instructions for a professing people in times of great security and degeneracy
Useful instructions for a professing people in times of great security and degeneracy: delivered in several sermons on solemn occasions: / by Mr. Samuel Willard Pastor of the Church of Christ at Groton. ; [Eight lines of Scripture texts]
printed by Samuel Green, 1673
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
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You see Edom here makes a great do of Enquiry: there is an hypocritical and false, and there is a sincere and true Enquiry made about divine Dispensations, and the one apparently, and to the view of the world, may be as earnestly pressed as the other.
Reas. 1. Because there are other things which may excite such an Enquiry, besides the fear of God; viz.
1. A natural fear, which may be stirred up at the first hearing of Threatenings, and discovery of tokens presaging Calamity; the sight of dismal Clouds, and the noise of some terrible Thunder, cracks, do at the first carry a kind of consternation along with them: and this makes men, till by degrees they outgrow their affrightment, to be very sedulous to know what thes-things mean.
1. A natural fear, which may be sti•red up at the first hearing of Threatnings, and discovery of tokens presaging Calamity; the sight of dismall Clouds, and the noise of some terrible Thunder, cracks, do at the first carry a kinde of consternation along with them: and this makes men, till by degrees they outgrow their affrightment, to be very sedulous to know what thes-things mean.